


Catharsis

by kelppy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6120382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelppy/pseuds/kelppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They told Lexa to go for therapy. She signs up at a local boxing gym instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for gross medical or military inaccuracies.

_But even after admitting this_ — _and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed_ — _and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis._

—American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

 

She spits into the sink, hand going up to feel for the cut around her left brow and the purpling flesh underneath. She groans more out of irritation than anything. Blood curls thickly in the water and is drained down the sink.

An ache is building in her head, fiercer and fiercer by the minute.

“You let him get too close; your guard was sloppy,” Anya, perpetually drawling and sneering from where she leans against the doorframe, says. “You deserve what you got.”

Lexa’s knuckles are bloody and trembling on the sink. She spits out some residual blood until the metallic taste is only a faint tang on her tongue and glares at Anya through the cracked mirror.

“Not now,” she warns.

She’s been told that she has quite an effect on people. She’s of a lean build, average height at five-foot-five, but it’s her eyes, dark and intense with a sort of cunning, that makes people look the other way; delinquent, violent eyes that are hard and cruel. But Anya is not one to be taken lightly, either. She meets Lexa’s glare head-on, daring her with narrowed eyes.

“You’re a hurt dog licking your wounds—when if not now?”

There’s pain in her fingers; Lexa can’t move at least two of them and they’re bent unnaturally, all crooked and knobbly and sore, black under the nails with blood. The throbbing makes it hard to think, and sooner or later, she’s slamming her palms onto the pedestal sink and growling, “Leave me alone.”

The adrenaline hasn’t yet left her body, numbing some pain for now. She feels her blood hum underneath her heated skin.

Anya moves forward the way a mother does when she’s about to strike an impudent child, but she only curls her lip in disgust. “Don’t be pouty and upset. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Now you listen here, _kid_ , what you did today, the mistakes you made in the ring—now you might think it’s all fine and dandy because you won, but it’s not always going to work out like that, you hear me? You just got lucky. Those mistakes could get you killed.”

Lexa roughly swipes her lips with the back of her hand, seeing a streak of blood smeared there when she pulls it away. Her heart’s hammering away. She turns off the tap and moves away from the sink. Grabs her gym bag off the floor and pushes past Anya, who lets her leave.

She’s halfway out the door and struggling to pull on her hoodie when she hears Anya yell, “You’re a real asshole, Lex! And a fucking child!”

It’s raining lightly. Droplets fall onto the shingles and down the alley below, making muddy puddles out of potholes and slicking the asphalt road. Large slants of light stretch up to the roads and walls with every passing car, slinking away just as fast. The rain leaves bird-shit-like tracks on her dense grey hoodie. She hastens her pace.

Her stomach grumbles; she’d only had a late lunch and snacked on bananas in between, and it’s near ten o’clock at night. No place would be open at this hour.

There _is_ a grocer not far from there, just further down the street with the suburban houses and their grey-tiled roofs and silver Chevy Impalas sitting out on the parking lot. The grocer is open till three in the morning. She makes her way there instead, wishing she had cleaned up better.

Her fingers still hurt; they need to be properly set. The gash over her left brow has stopped bleeding, the blood crusting the hairs of her brow and down the side of the swelling eye. The bridge of her nose is dented too, soon to be swelling and purpling and aching. Just like the rest of her.

But above all, she’s exhausted. Unfortunately, she can’t sleep on an empty stomach, leaving with her with little choice but to find something in the Korean grocer.

The grocer is a squat little store with narrow aisles and listless, zombie-like employees working the late-night shift. They sell things at half-price and shorter shelf-life. It’s mostly deserted at night and ideal for those working late-night hours.

Lexa self-consciously keeps her head down as she scans through the aisles for something, picking up a can of sardines, a loaf of bread, and is reaching for a box of cereal when it falls from her weakened grip.

A woman, blonde and in light-blue scrubs under a black buttoned cardigan, cradling a basket at the crook of her arm, startles at the sound. Lexa grumbles out an apology as she bends to retrieve the box when the woman says, “Did you know your fingers are broken?”

Lexa grunts in reply.

“I mean, I don’t mean to pry, but I’m a doctor—well I’m actually a medical intern but—”

“It’s fine.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

Lexa exhales deeply. Her ribs ache at the motion; her opponent earlier had landed a solid hook to her side. Anya was right. She had been reckless.

“What do you think?”

“I’d say about a six or seven on a one-to-ten scale.”

Lexa tucks the cereal under her arm, to her sore ribs, and swivels to face the woman, not missing how the woman’s eyes widen at her roughened appearance. “Listen lady,” she says. “I’m just really tired right now and I just wanna go home and sleep it off. Do you mind?”

The woman holds her hands up, palms outward, in a gesture of surrender. “Not at all. But all I’m saying is, I can take a look at that. If you want. If you let it be it might not heal right and I’m sure you need your hands for whatever you’re doing.”

Lexa sighs, pressing the pads of her fingers to her forehead but wincing at the twinge of pain it brings. The broken ones are plum-coloured now, ballooning up like a fat sausage.

“Well, what do you suggest?” she asks.

“My place is just around the corner. I can clean your other wounds, too.”

Lexa narrows her eyes. “You’re just going to invite me to your place? Lady, you don’t even know who I am, what I do.”

“You mean, do I think you’re going to hurt me?” the woman says. Lexa frowns at the straightforwardness of the question. “Well, I don’t know. _Are_ you gonna hurt me?”

“No,” Lexa says. “But just about anyone could say that.”

“Somehow I think I’ll just have to take your word for it. Now come on.”

 

 

 

 

The woman lives in an apartment complex two blocks away from the grocer, in a one-bedroom apartment with laminate flooring and modest, neutral-coloured furniture to go with the beige walls and semi-transparent drapes.

The apartment is neat, tidy, save for the mounting pile of dirty clothes draped over a chair.

The woman smiles sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck as she lets Lexa in. “Excuse the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”

Lexa hums. She rubs the soles of her shoes hard and repeatedly on the welcome mat to scrape off any stubborn dirt and mud.

The woman pulls the elastic band sliding off her hair and releases her ponytail into wavy blonde hair that falls just past her shoulders. She waves Lexa over to the kitchen table, a solid oak square table for four that is pushed against the wall, and says, “Go ahead and sit there while I get the stuff. You want anything? Something to drink?”

Lexa shakes her head. She thinks, some booze would be fantastic.

She uncomfortably sits on a chair, setting the gym bag down at her leg and taking stock of her broken fingers and bloodied knuckles. She tries to bend her bloated ring finger, hissing when it finally does, with delayed response and a sharp pain. And even then it doesn’t bend all the way. She curses, tries her luck with the other finger—the little finger—and receives the same reaction.

When the woman emerges from the bathroom later, she has changed into a soft grey shirt the colour of television static and a pair of drawstring sweatpants with the number eighty printed in white varsity font on one thigh. She sits across from Lexa and lines up some alcoholic swabs, non-stretch surgical tape, and a surgical needle and thread (which she had prepared just in case she needs it).

“You’re going to have to go to the hospital to get an X-ray done for me to really know what’s wrong with your fingers, though,” the woman says.

Lexa huffs. “I think it’s pretty obvious what’s wrong with my fingers,” she says as she holds up her crooked fingers.

The woman glares, sensing her mockery and making it known that it is not appreciated. “I mean you never really know with bones unless you get an X-ray scan.”

“So…you’re useless?”

“Not as useless as you’re going to be if you refuse to seek medical attention for your hand.”

Lexa almost smirks. “I was going to. Sometime. You just beat me to the punch.”

The woman is not so gentle in grabbing Lexa’s hand, resulting in a flinch and a hiss. “Sorry,” the woman says, though she doesn’t sound the least sorry.

She prods at Lexa’s fingers, testing them and bending for their mobility and muttering apologies under her breath like clockwork whenever Lexa recoils or tries to pull her hand away.

“I’m going to set them and then tape them,” the woman says. “But it’s going to hurt.”

“Can’t be as bad as getting them broken was,” Lexa grunts.

The woman smiles wryly. “That’s the spirit.” Then she breathes, “Okay. Are you ready?”

No. “Yes.”

 

 

 

 

The woman—Clarke, as she had introduced herself distractedly halfway through the grisly procedure—examines Lexa’s hand, knuckles cleaned, broken fingers straightened and buddy-taped together, saying, “I did a pretty good job.”

“My hand’s never been as pretty, that’s for sure,” Lexa comments sarcastically.

“Yeah,” Clarke smiles, not picking up on the dark humour. “And your head—it looks like it’ll be just fine.”

The cut above Lexa’s left brow is held together by butterfly stitches. Clarke gets up then, opening her fridge and putting together a cold compress with ice and some towels and pressing it to Lexa’s bad eye, now swollen shut.

“So,” Clarke says as she pulls up a chair and sits on it. “Who are you and why are you in my house?”

Lexa rolls her eyes—well, eye. She says, “I’m Lexa. I’m here because you’re pushy and nosy.”

Clarke narrows her eyes. She applies more pressure onto Lexa’s eye. Lexa moves her head back in accordance till it presses against the wall.

“I’m a boxer,” she acquiesces.

Clarke’s eyes—diamond blue—brighten in interest and excitement. “You mean in the ring?”

“Not like you think,” Lexa answers. “I just box in a gym. Not competitively like on the sports channel.”

Clarke tilts her head. “That’s still boxing right? What you do?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never met a boxer.”

“Congratulations,” Lexa drawls. “Now you have.”

“Are you always this sarcastic?”

“Only when I’m conscious.”

“That’s…unfortunate.”

Clarke’s face is close now, so close Lexa can see the flutter of gossamer eyelashes and Clarke’s breath on her cheek, half-risen on her chair from when she had pushed the compress into Lexa’s eye. The silence unearths some tension and—Lexa stands, snatching the compress from Clarke’s hand.

“I, uh, should get going,” she roughly says, picking up her gym bag and about to bolt.

“Yeah,” Clarke says, breathless. She runs her hand through her messy hair. “Yeah, just hold on. Wait a minute.”

She goes to her fridge, unpins a card from under a magnet and hands it over to Lexa. “My card,” she says. “Just in case you need it.”

Lexa considers it for a beat, then takes it and slips it into her jeans pocket. She nods her thanks and pulls up her hood as she leaves.

Later that night, as rain beats down on her window, she lies in bed, freshly showered and changed.

Her hand teases at the waistband of her pants. But the thought leaves as soon as it comes; some wounds are no longer fresh but they hurt all the same.

 

 

 

 

Her next match is scheduled on a Tuesday, at the gym, facing one of the gym’s long-standing clients: Gustus from Long Beach. Her hand is mostly healed by then but she wraps more gauze around it just in case.

He is massive, relying more on brute strength rather than agility and speed. His footwork is more grounded, drawing strength from his core instead of momentum. So far it’s worked out well for him; he has won more fights than he has lost.

Despite all his rough-and-gruff manner he’s a kindly man who takes in stray dogs. Lexa respects him.

He lands a few hits in but ultimately she has him on his back, panting and grinning at her with sweat running into his eyes.

“Fuck you, kid,” he says good-naturedly, laughing.

She helps him up staggeringly. She’s no match compared to his strength. Fortunately she has always relied on stamina, speed and strategy. He claps her on the back and limps off, wiping his brow with a gym towel.

She stays behind to work the punching bag a little. Anya comes to her then, wearing a leather jacket and a smug expression that is almost proud.

“What,” Lexa says with a punch to the sand-filled bag.

Anya twists her lips. “You did better out there. I saw.”

Lexa nods. “Yeah, thanks.”

Anya’s face breaks into an unrestrained grin. “Aw, come on. Don’t tell me you’re still sore with me from the last match. You’ve got nothing to be sore about.”

“I’m not.”

Anya laughs. “Fuck you, Lex. Come on, clean up. Let’s go.”

Lexa frowns in confusion. “Where?”

“Figured I’ll buy back your favour with a beer or two.”

“You’ll just end up ditching me for someone else,” Lexa grunts, aiming another punch to the bag and following it up with another jab.

“Are you jealous?”

“Of the poor fellow you take home? Never.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Anya folds her arms, leans against the bag and tilts her upturned mouth at Lexa.

“Let’s just go.”

“You wanna hold my hand there?”

Lexa tosses her gloves at Anya’s head.

 

 

 

 

Anya takes her to a bar downtown, Sally’s. Anya’s the residual ghost that always comes back. So much so that the barkeep, a keen-eyed, dark-haired and sharp-mouthed woman named Raven, has her order down to a T.

They—Anya and Raven—greet each other with a displeased curl of the lip but Lexa knows they often go home together and in the dark, a grimace is as good as a grin.

“You’d better not start fights in here again. Not after the last time,” Raven wags a threatening finger in Anya’s direction. Anya looks unamused and disinterested.

“This is what I get for defending your dignity?”

“I don’t need _you_ to do that for me.”

“Why? Because you’re perfectly capable of doing it yourself?” Anya climbs onto the bar stool and folds her arms on the granite countertop.

“I control the flow of alcohol here. Of course I am.”

Anya narrows her eyes. “Is that a threat? Are you refusing to serve me? You know you need my patronage, Reyes.”

“What for, if you tip like a miser.”

“I tip depending on how well I’m served, so,” Anya taps her fingernails on the granite.

Lexa sighs and hoists herself on the bar stool next to Anya. It’s already started, Lexa thinks.

Raven scowls and turns to Lexa in an immediate smile. Lexa is already used to the whiplash that she only smiles wearily in return.

“Hey, Lex,” Raven says. “How’s it going? Jesus, you look like shit.”

There’s a bruise at Lexa’s cheekbone, and a split lip, but otherwise she’s fine. She smiles. “You should have seen the other guy.”

Raven shudders. “Is that like the most overused, cliché line boxers always use? Do the whole lot of you grow up together or is it just like a boxer thing?”

Anya puts a hand flat on the countertop and says, “Just do your job and serve us some alcohol like you’re paid to.”

“Yeah and I should be paid more for that,” Raven grumbles but slides a couple of beers accompanied by shots towards them.

Lexa swallows a burning mouthful of beer and feels a lot better immediately. Then she presses her reddened knuckles to the cold bottle.

Anya downs some of hers and, in an uncharacteristic tentativeness, asks, “Heard from her lately?”

Lexa grimaces and takes another generous gulp. “Last I heard she’s moving to Florida. That’s all.”

Anya nods sympathetically. “Far from here.”

“Far from here,” Lexa echoes.

“That’s good, right?”

“I guess.”

“You went to see her?”

Lexa shakes her head. “No. Didn’t see the need to. Everything’s all wrapped up in a pretty bundle with a ribbon on it and everything. I can’t go and ruin it for her.”

“You’re such a sap, Lex. Just go there and get angry. You deserve to.”

“And what happens then? It’s not her fault,” Lexa shakes her head again, just slightly, and drinks her beer. “If anyone’s to blame it should be me. I don’t blame her.”

“Hell, Lex, it’s not your fault. You were away. You were trying to stay alive, dammit.”

Lexa stares distantly into the cabinet behind the counter. “Time does that to people, I guess. Maybe it’s nobody’s fault. Maybe it’s just the way it is. You know, these things change people. For better or for worse.”

Anya is momentarily silenced. Something poignant fills the space between the two of them until Anya mumbles, “Shit, Lex.”

“Yeah,” Lexa says, but her grip on the neck of the bottle tightens, “it _is_ shit.”

 

 

 

 

When Lexa wakes up the following morning, hungover and disoriented, there’s a long list of missed calls and text messages in her phone, which she finds lodged halfway into a drywall that partitions her kitchen from the living room.

She drags her hand over her face, cursing. Then she goes over to extricate her phone—thankfully a sturdy brand; still in one piece and functional—from the wall with a forceful yank that powders her with drywall dust.

“Shitfuck,” she mutters, scrolling past her texts and call log. “Fuck. Fucking Anya.”

They had apparently gotten drunk last night, which succeeded into hideously poor choices and drunk dialling.

She sees a couple of familiar names and cringes at the thought of having to explain herself but her finger pauses on an unknown number. She frowns. Then taps on the number and hears it ring before it’s picked up at the fourth ring.

“Lexa,” a disapproving voice says. Lexa can imagine a frowning mouth already. “You can’t just call me up at two in the morning and tell me to go ‘fuck horses in Florida’ and make neighing sounds. I have an early shift. I’m working. I handle needles and scalpels. Lives depend on me. I was _sleeping_.”

Lexa feels her cheeks burning. She has to sit down for this. “ _Clarke_? Oh fuck. Listen, I’m sorry. I was drunk last night and I hadn’t meant to—how did I get your number anyway?”

She hears Clarke sigh, crackling the intercom. “The card I gave you was only for emergencies. That privilege was not to be abused.”

“It’s not—It’s Anya’s fault,” she says, vexed, feeling black bile, sourly bitter, rise to the back of her throat.

“Anya,” Clarke repeats. “You mean the one screaming psalms in the back?”

“Well, I can’t exactly remember but I suppose so, yes.”

Lexa scratches at her hair, pulling taut the chaotic braids that had come undone or tangled during her night out or in sleep. Her hair would be frizzy for days after. Lexa sighed.

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” she says.

“Hold on,” Clarke says urgently. “You mentioned a Costia.”

Lexa presses a palm to her forehead, trying to dampen the throbbing, “What of it?”

“Well, I just—never mind. Forget it. It’s none of my business anyway.”

Lexa waits for Clarke to continue. Listens to her hitching breath like it had been at her ear itself.

“I guess you have my number now,” Lexa says carefully when Clarke doesn’t say anything else.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I dunno,” Clarke says. “What do you want me to do with it?”

Lexa shrugs even while knowing that Clarke can’t see it. “Whatever you want to, I guess.”

“Alright, sure,” Clarke says.

“So what _are_ you going to do with it?” Lexa asks.

“Whatever I want to, like you said.”

“Which is?”

“Which is what?”

Lexa grunts in irritations but says, “Forget it. Don’t you have work anyways?”

“I’m on break right now.”

“Well get to it, then.”

“I will,” Clarke snaps. But then in a softer voice, says, “You’re probably hungover right now so you should drink a lot of water, coffee, or ginger tea if you’ve got it and ease up on the aspirin a little, would you. Knowing you you’d probably only just recovered from a fight.”

Lexa wets her lips. She drums her fingers against the hemp fabric of her couch. “Is there any time you’re not being a doctor?”

“Medical intern,” Clarke corrects. “And, of course. When I’m not conscious.”

“That must be tiring.”

“You’ll thank me for it someday.”

“I suppose we’ll see about that.”

 

 

 

 

Lexa dreams often. She dreams vividly and in lurid colours that only makes sense in dream-logic. What kind of blood is blue?

She dreams of sand, rivulets of sweat down her nape and soaking into her collar, the heavy weight of a M16 automatic rifle slung around her neck, the familiar heat of the land. In more turbulent dreams there are mortar shells, incoherent screaming of some unspeakable, chronic pain, grainy sand between her fingers mixed with the slippery slime of intestines from a gaping wound on her stomach, a bum shoulder slick with blood, scraped knees and gory, distorted faces of people in her infantry, all fixed in some morbid expression of fear and pain.

She wakes up afraid of her own shadow and takes a cold shower just to get some of it out of her system. Then she inhales rather than drink a cup of coffee and goes for a run around the neighbourhood. Afterward she goes to the gym.

She works her frustrations out there, on a shoddy punching bag, used to the routine and finding relief and comfort in the predictability of everyday life. Her hand trembles now and then, but she wraps gauze around them and tapes on a boxing glove and she finds that it stops. And when she wears herself into exhaustion the dreams are less frequent and scarcer.

There is a medal in her drawer and a looping voicemail in her head and a whole lot of anger and bitterness in her heart that refuses to go away.

 

 

 

 

Clarke’s arms are shaking, her eyes bloodshot and frenzied the way only caffeine could make it, and she is swaying on her feet when she is finally done with her shift. Her stomach is cramping and she feels a little nauseated on the bus ride home.

She had had to take on some extra hours to cover for a sick colleague.

All she wants to do now is just take off all her clothes and not having to bother brushing her teeth or washing her face with face wash and just lie down in bed and—

“Lexa?”

Lexa is at her doorstep, in her grey hoodie and a can of beer next to her, looking pale and worse for wear. When she sees Clarke approach she rises to her feet but with some difficulty—there is a limp in her step from what Clarke suspects is a faulty ankle, sprained or fractured.

“I didn’t know what time you usually got off work, so,” Lexa winces when she gestures to the doorstep, “I waited.”

Clarke’s mouth is gaping. She says, “You couldn’t have called me?”

Lexa smiles apologetically. “My phone died. Should I have called earlier to book an appointment?”

“You’re mocking me.”

Lexa sighs but winces again and Clarke’s eyes drift to her midsection, her ribs.

“Fine, come in. I don’t understand why you don’t just go to the hospital.”

Lexa follows Clarke into her apartment, limping to the kitchen chair as Clarke holds the door open for her. “I’m not very fond of them, thank you very much.”

“Not fond enough that you’d rather die than go to the hospital for proper care and treatment?”

Lexa laughs, a short bark that is cut off halfway by a grimace. “Let’s not be dramatic here. I’m hardly bleeding out on your floors.”

She lowers herself slowly on the kitchen chair while Clarke splashes some water on her face in the sink.

“You’d be surprised how it’s usually the little things that kill you.”

“Are you going to help me, or not?” Lexa grouches, obviously in pain.

“Yes,” Clarke sighs, directing an upwards gesture at Lexa then goes to gather her medical supplies which she always keep stocked in her apartment. “Take off your shirt. I’m going to have to take a look at those ribs. And your shoes. Take those off, too. Roll up your pants.”

Clarke returns to a topless and bare-footed Lexa, in a Prussian blue sports bra and matching ugly splotches along her right set of ribs. Lexa is inhaling and exhaling slowly through her mouth, head tilted upwards and eyes trained on the ceiling as though trying to breathe through the pain.

Clarke falters. Lexa’s body is gnarled and dappled with raised skin and pasty white scars, some almost imperceptible except in strong light, interrupting almost rudely the symmetrical patterns of tattoos at her right forearm and down her back.

Most distinctly there is a mottled circular indent on her left shoulder, slightly below the joint, and a matching one on her back, where a bullet must have presumably scorched through. There is another along the side of her stomach; a streaking, winding one.

Clarke blinks, stops staring and promptly approaches Lexa, dumping her supplies on a clean towel laid out on the table and taking Lexa’s chin in her hand, tilting her head so she can see if there was any more damage that needs to be fixed.

Lexa’s pupils are pinpoints as they rest on Clarke’s face, at her rounded jaw. 

“My head’s fine,” Lexa says, and Clarke feels her jaw move against her hot palms. “It’s my ribs and my foot.”

Clarke nods. She kneels in between Lexa’s legs, flattening a hand gently over the ribs and watching for Lexa’s breath. At Lexa’s sharp intake of breath, she nods again.

“You’re…you have extensive scarring over your body,” Clarke notes, as she tapes up Lexa’s bruised ribs.

“Yeah,” Lexa agrees, slightly short of breath.

“Want to tell me why?”

“I’m a boxer.”

“Yes, but this,” Clarke touches the scar at Lexa’s shoulder and she shies away from Clarke’s fingers like it still hurts, “is a bullet wound. Boxers don’t fight with guns, do they?”

“How would you know that, if I’m the first boxer you’ve ever met.”

Clarke frowns at Lexa’s slightly condescending tone. “Don’t treat me as if I’m stupid. Are you in cahoots with the law?”

Lexa snorts a strained and stressed sound. “No.”

“Then—“

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business. I’m no threat to you.”

Clarke nods, falls silent, and process to probe and prod at Lexa’s swollen ankle, purple underneath the jutting bone.

Then Lexa sighs falteringly and she says, “I was a Marine.”

Clarke looks sharply up at Lexa, who is staring down at her hurt foot, flexing the ankle to see if it brings any discomfort.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“For how long?”

“About four years. I did two tours. Then I quit.”

“Why’d you quit?”

Lexa turns her head away, shrugging noncommittally and Clarke knows she won’t get an answer; not yet, anyway.

“Are you done yet?” Lexa asks.

“Yeah,” Clarke says and sits back on her haunches. “All good to go.”

“Fantastic,” Lexa grunts and pulls herself up to her feet, testing her sprained ankle. “Thanks for patching me up, Clarke.”

But Clarke doesn’t move. “You know,” she begins. “It’s late and maybe you should…stay the night.”

Lexa frowns quizzically. “We only just met.”

“No, it has nothing to do with that. I mean, in the state you’re in I don’t feel…it won’t be safe. I can’t allow my patient to go wandering at night with busted ribs and a sprained ankle.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I know you can. I’m sure you can. But I’m going to have to insist for you to stay.”

Their eyes meet and, both stubborn mules, refuse to tear their gazes away first. Until Lexa clears her throat and Clarke blinks.

“I’m taking the couch,” Lexa says, in a tone that allows for no discussion.

Not that Clarke ever listens. “But you’re hurt.”

“Yes, Clarke, that’s why I came here.”

“Don’t be patronising. It makes you sound like an asshole.”

“I admit I am an asshole.”

Clarke stands and presses the pads of her fingers in the hollow of her eye sockets. Lexa ambles around her to haul herself to the couch, where she sinks into and breathes a tired sigh.

“My bed is a double. There’s enough room. Get up, come on.”

“I’m too comfortable to move,” Lexa says adamantly.

Clarke’s eyes are drooping at the point, and her head feels too heavy for her neck and she knows that’s not a good sign. She shuts her eyes briefly. Makes her way to Lexa on her couch and pulls her by the hand into the bedroom.

“You’re extremely bold,” Lexa remarks.

Clarke strips down to a tank-top and sleep shorts and moves to occupy the right side of the bed, closer to the window. “I’m tired, Lexa.”

`Lexa seems to realise this, too, for she submits, slipping under the covers and lying stiffly on her unhurt side.

Clarke is fast asleep in no time, limbs turning jelly on the sheets and her body easing into the mattress in a relaxed curl.

But Lexa—her mind alight and alive for some time afterward, thinking of browned skin and the taste of coconut-oiled hair in her mouth.

 

 

 

 

Lexa dreams. Her dreams convert into nightmares and she is grunting and whimpering on the sheets, restlessly shifting and writhing, her knee jerking solidly into Clarke’s tailbone.

Clarke startles into consciousness, hair mussed and eyes half-open, turning her head with a confounded, “Wha—?”

Lexa is awake, too, lying stretched on the bed, hand flying to her face and fingers pressing into an eyelid. She is close to hyperventilating, Clarke can tell. But Lexa is regulating her breathing, steadying herself and eventually, the hand falls from her face and her eyes open to stare at the ceiling above.

“I’m sorry,” Lexa whispers hoarsely, sensing that Clarke is awake and staring. “Go back to sleep.”

“You were having a nightmare.”

Lexa swallows. “Go back to sleep,” she says.

Clarke turns. Something warm pools in her gut. She takes Lexa’s hand, glancing at her face for permission. And when nothing happens, she simply holds it. Says nothing.

She falls asleep that way.

Lexa is gone come morning.

 

 

 

 

Lexa puts in more hours in the gym, trains more intensely, and participates in more matches than before. She is there when it opens and one of the last few to leave when it closes.

Clarke doesn’t call her.

Then early one morning, when the gym is closed due to some repair works, Lexa borrows Anya’s car and drives down to Tampa, Florida. A voicemail plays in her head all the while.

She follows the address written long ago in a creased pink post-it she’d kept away in a drawer and finds herself in the driveway of a condo unit.

She takes several deep breaths, checks if she looks halfway presentable with the rear-view mirror and steps out of the car. She hesitates before planting three solid knocks on the heavy wooden door.

I’ll count in my head till ten, she thinks. If she doesn’t open by then—

The door swings easily open for all its weight and suddenly, she feels like a naïve, foolish teenager again. Her heart thuds rapidly, the way a dog recognises its master.

“Lexa,” Costia says. But the name is so harsh on her tongue now, clumsy with disuse.

“Hi,” Lexa tries. “I was in the neighbourhood. And I thought to see you.”

“Yes, of course, come in, come in.”

The interior is tastefully furnished in a kind of Boho modern décor. The walls are cream-coloured, with monochrome carpets and a white linen sofa and a glass coffee table and sheer white drapes, almost identical to Clarke’s, if not for the damask patterns.

Lexa, in a hoodie and black jeans, feels very outlandish standing there. Costia ushers her to the sofa and disappears into the kitchen to fetch them some tea.

“I’ve been hoping you’d come to see me,” she says, setting the tea set on a tray down on the coffee table. She straightens and smoothens out her cotton skirt so suitable for afternoon Floridian heat whereas Lexa feels like suffocating in her hoodie. She folds her lips into a soft smile, “It’s been a while, Lex.”

“It has been.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. Where’s—”

“Working. You know how it is in the office.”

Costia studies Lexa’s face with fondness, an old sense of joy and relief. Costia’s face is not as grey and deep-lined as Lexa remembers. “You look different.”

“Better, I hope.”

Costia squints and, upon noticing something, smiles. “Did you break your nose again?”

Lexa feels along the bridge of her nose. It feels bumpy under her fingers. “It might have taken a few hits, but it endured.”

“You always do.”

Lexa can’t help it when she says, “But some things don’t.”

Costia’s face falls slightly. “No, they don’t.”

They speak of little things; insignificant, trivial things that dance so masterly around the topic both of them are too afraid to broach—one because she is afraid of what she might do, what she might say, and the other because it is painful to speak of old, buried things that have long died.

And when Lexa leaves later feeling hollowed out and empty, being denied the closure she seeks because of how timid she is to initiate it, she drives home with trembling hands on the wheel, above the speed limit and with watery eyes. 

She takes an immediate left and pulls up along the curb of Clarke’s apartment building, hoping that she’s not currently at work. Or if she is, Lexa will wait at her door.

She takes the stairs two-by-two, too impatient and hasty to wait for the lift. And by the time she reaches Clarke’s door, she’s panting.

She knocks and waits.

She hears the muted chatter of a television behind the door and footfalls and then the door swings open and Clarke is there; round-jawed, dimple-chinned, sunlight-haired Clarke.

“Lex—?” she says but Lexa backs her into the apartment, tips her over into the couch and kisses her.

Clarke is temporarily unresponsive but eventually thaws and kisses back, beginning to feel more brazen as Lexa’s fingers cling to her hips. But when they are forced to part for air afterward, Clarke seizes the opportunity to ask, “What’s going on?”

Lexa, dark-eyed and breathing hard, licks her lips and says, “Nothing. Maybe I just want you right now.”

“Why?”

Lexa groans. “Must you be so frustrating, Clarke?”

“You and this,” she gestures between them, “and me. Is not like you at all, isn’t it? What are you doing, really?”

“You kissed me back,” Lexa narrows her eyes.

“Doesn’t mean I want to go on though. Not until you tell me what this is really about.”

Lexa disentangles herself, pushing herself away and upright until she sits on the other end of the couch and sees Clarke’s paint-flecked toenails by her lap. She is pensive.

“I was in the Marines,” she explains. “During my time there, I was with someone. Costia. You might have heard of her.” Clarke nods. Lexa continues, “All this waiting and waiting and without the guarantee that I might even come back alive or in one piece—it…changes people. It changes things. By the end of my second tour I can’t go home to her because she has found someone else. I refused to see her.”

“Okay,” Clarke says. “But what does that have to with this?”

Lexa’s eyes turn apologetic. “I just came back from seeing her.”

“Oh.”

Clarke immediately gets off the couch, cushion dropping to the floor at her feet. Some tense moments trickle by. She looks hurt one second, insulted the next, and then she is tossing the couch in Lexa’s face.

“So I’m your go-to fix-it, huh?” Clarke snarls. “Need your wounds patched up, come to me, huh?”

Lexa gets to her feet too. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just—I just.”

“You can’t just _use_ people! God, what’s wrong with you?”

“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t _think_. I’m sorry,” Lexa says. “I’ll go.” A beat. “I’ll go.”

Clarke says nothing as Lexa leaves, turning away and pushing her hair back. She breathes deeply, feeling the press of tears at her lids and she wills it away. Stares at the ceiling until it goes away.

 

 

 

 

“Why the glum face?” Raven asks, wiping down the sinks and the countertops with a dishrag.

Lexa pulls herself on a stool. Sets her elbows on the counter and puts her head in her hands. “Just give me a whiskey, neat.”

“Whiskey, huh. That’s hardly party material. You sure you’re feeling okay?”

“I’m not. But I will be, after some of that whiskey I asked for.”

“Jeez. You’re even snappier than Anya when you’re upset.”

Raven pours her some, an Old Forester brand, into a lowball glass and pushes it to Lexa. Business is slow and easy, barely rolling into the midday heat.

“You look beat, Lex,” Raven says.

“I’ve been driving all night,” Lexa says in explanation, running a finger along the rim of the glass.

“Want me to call Anya?” Raven volunteers.

Lexa looks up and smiles blearily at Raven. “That’s okay. Don’t call her; she might be busy.”

“She’s always busy unless you need her. And you need her, Lex.”

“No,” Lexa says, downing some of the whiskey. “I don’t need her. Not right now.”

“Well, what do you need?”

Lexa knocks back her whiskey and sets the glass on the counter with a loud smack. “More of this, please.”

And she looks so pitiful and pathetic that Raven obliges. She pours herself another glass because that kind of sadness, deep and profound and heavy, is contagious.

 

 

 

 

Lexa decks the girl with a hard right, sending her flat on the canvas beneath. The girl’s gloved hands come up instinctively to her face, shielding it from the blows Lexa continues to viciously rain on her. The look in Lexa’s eyes are virulent, unyielding as she hauls the girl—a relative newcomer with a square jaw and praiseworthy persistence—by her armpits to prop her against a corner pole, grabs the back of the girl’s head and hauls it down, launches knee after knee into his face until she feels bone giving way and something cracking and there are freckles of blood on her knee when the referee slams into her and drags her away.

The girl is out cold. She slumps down the pole, her arms catching on the ring ropes.

Lexa is growling like a caged animal snapping at its iron bars, restlessly pacing the ring as the referee goes to check on the girl, tilting her head to the side and pulling an eyelid up. He shakes his bald head and the match is officially over; the girl is too out of it to continue.

Anya shoves Lexa hard at the shoulder. “What the fuck was that?”

Lexa, damp towel slung over her neck, greedily chugs down water from a water bottle. “What?” she asks harshly.

“You didn’t have to do that—she’s just a girl; she’s new. Why did you have to beat her so hard? For chrissakes, Lex, you knocked her out.”

Lexa shrugs but in the rush of adrenaline she feels too big for her skin and every movement is exaggerated by the eager contraction and relaxation of muscles. “She’s got to learn some time.”

“And you figured that had to be _now_? What’s wrong with you?”

Lexa sneers. “I didn’t realise you’d gone soft.”

Anya shakes her head and backs away, merges into the alarmed crowd. “I’m not soft at all but, Lex, that was just cruel.”

 

 

 

 

Clarke doesn’t see Lexa again for a time. And things have been so busy at work that the thought just slips her mind completely.

But then something happens while she’s ploughing through her shift late at night (she had swapped shifts to take on night shifts) when a gurney is wheeled in. She had been checking her phone, replying to a text from her mother when she steps aside to make way for the approaching gurney, not at all paying attention.

But as it passes by her, and she turns to look, she sees a familiar face—bloodied and the jaw definitely broken, possibly shattered, and one eye swelling shut, unconscious—before the gurney is wheeled away into the emergency room.

The phone almost falls from her hands.

 

 

 

 

Swelling of the brain, Jackson says; a mandibular fracture, he says; stress fractures in the fingers and ankle, he says; condition is stable for now, he says.

Clarke enters the ward, afraid as though Lexa is awake and about to confront her. They had to string her jaw together with drugged wire. The swelling will reduce eventually; apparently it isn’t severe. But until then Lexa is forced to remain in a drug-induced sleep and only until then will Clarke sit by her bedside and wish she could hold her hand.

She takes the rest of the day off, and sits watching Lexa sleep.

A woman comes in a little later, a tall and skinny woman with curious and uncommon features that are warped in an expression slightly short of furious, but extremely worried.

She glares accusatorily at Clarke, frozen by Lexa’s side and growls, “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of Lexa’s. I work here. Saw her come in,” Clarke says.

The woman nods tightly and says, “Anya. I’m Anya. I know that little piece of shit there on the bed.”

Clarke smiles, but it is strained and jaded. Lexa had told her that Anya takes on her alter-ego of a preacher-woman when intoxicated, with the uncanny ability to make ‘holy words sound like swear words’. “Yeah.”

Anya looks and _properly_ looks at Lexa’s still form then. Her eyes survey Lexa up and down and exhales, folding her arms. “How is she?”

“She’ll be fine. Just got to keep the swelling in her brain down. What happened?”

Anya nodded. “She participated in a fight she shouldn’t have. I warned her not to. Hell, I told her not to. Well, it’s a good thing that she’s so hard-headed because it saved her.”

“Yes, it looks like it did.”

 

 

 

 

Lexa hears murmuring. Like a radio turned down to its lowest volume; bodiless voices that just won’t seem to stop. But in her mind, sluggishly and with the efficiency of a snail, begins to associate the name and the face to the voice.

A drawling, nasally one—Anya. A wilful, passionately articulate one—Raven. A deeper, huskier one—Clarke.

Anya and Raven to the left of her, Clarke to the right.

Her eyelids are heavy, almost as if they are glued shut. She cracks open an eye—the other can’t be opened at all—and glances around deliriously. It’s bright. She sees shapes and colours but then she has to close them again because it hurts her head.

“She’s waking up.”

“Or not.”

And she falls back into deep, dreamless sleep.

 

 

 

 

The next time she awakens, she’s more upright than before, and she can open both eyes this time. Her eyes are glazed as she orientates herself, and the irregular blobs of colours finally take definite shape in a dark-haired and similarly dark-eyed woman with her leg trapped in a brace.

“Raven,” she tries, but her lips are chapped and her throat parched, and she only manages a weak rasp. It hurts to talk.

Raven turns to look at her immediately. Her taut face finally relaxes. “You’re up,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Don’t talk too much. I’ll get Clarke.”

And she leaves. Lexa struggles to stay conscious and then Clarke steps into the room, in a starched lab coat and scrubs underneath, a stethoscope around her neck and bouncing on her chest as she speedily moves to Lexa’s side. She touches Lexa’s shoulder as if to ascertain her consciousness, checks her vitals and makes sure everything is in good form before she once more returns to Lexa’s side, this time with a tender, almost hurt look in her eyes.

She touches Lexa’s forearm, leaves her fingers at the triangular area of her elbow pit.

“It’ll hurt to talk for a while,” Clarke says slowly. “So try not to talk. In the meantime, it’ll be best if you’d get some rest.”

Lexa’s heavy-lidded eyes are already closing. Clarke thumbs the pads under her eyes gently.

“I’ll be here when you wake up.”

 

 

 

 

Anya spits a high-velocity grape seed bullet at Lexa from her chair at the foot of the bed.

Lexa swats it away and off the bed. “Stop it,” she glares.

“Come here and make me,” Anya taunts, launching another.

“You know I will.”

“Is that supposed to frighten me? Please. You’ll be soft as jelly once you leave that bed. You’ve lost so much muscle mass I think I’m more muscular than you.”

“I will,” Lexa promises. “It’s not like being confined to a bed ever stopped me.” But then she stops as her jaw starts aching again. Though her face is impassive as ever, Anya smirks, having caught on.

“Careful there, Lex. Clarke might kill you if you hurt yourself again.”

“Isn’t she supposed to be a doctor here?”

“Medical intern,” Anya snipes.

“Ugh,” Lexa grunts and brings up her hand to make a shooing gesture. “Go home.”

“I took the day off,” Anya tells her.

“Go home,” Lexa repeats.

“Come here and make me.” Anya spits another grape seed at Lexa through a smug smirk.

Clarke comes in just then, narrowing her eyes at the pool of grape seeds around Lexa’s blanketed legs. Anya stops, but she lifts her brow at Clarke in challenge.

Clarke sighs. “Maybe you’d like to stop aggravating her condition?”

“How so?” Anya asks.

“Maybe stop with the grape seeds?”

Anya takes another grape into her mouth, chews and spits it at Clarke in turn. Clarke, clenching her jaw, hotly says, “You know I could get you removed from this room, right?”

Anya is about to say something when Lexa calls softly for Clarke. Clarke turns, distracted, asks, “What?”

Lexa’s hand, now free of her obstructive cast, reaches out to freely tangle her fingers with Clarke’s, who lets her. “Long day?”

Clarke smiles down at her, and though it is weary, it is contented. “Yeah,” she breathes.

“Take a break,” Lexa urges. “Sit down.”

Clarke shakes her head, “Later.”

She looks at Lexa for a while longer and then runs her fingers affectionately down her hairline and sends a cautionary glare at Anya before leaving.

Anya finds some tangerines in the fruits basket Raven had sent over and peels the skin away with her fingers. “You need to talk to her.”

Lexa stares at the door after Clarke, and says, “I know.”

 

 

 

 

It takes about a week to get Lexa on her feet, and up and about. A few days more to come around and confess.

“I’m a horrible person,” Lexa says. “This is why I can’t have nice things; I’ll break them.”

Clarke pads to where Lexa sits on her hunter green hemp couch from the kitchen, where she had been brewing some coffee. She frowns.

Lexa’s jaw will take some time to heal. Her mouth can’t close fully sometimes and there’s a shadow of grey along her now-choppy jawline, and it still hurts to talk a lot, but she needs to say it now while Clarke is in her apartment.

“What?”

“Sit down,” Lexa says and scoots over to make space.

Clarke claims the far end of the couch. She leans forwards and rests her elbows on her spread knees in interest.

“I hurt you, before,” Lexa begins.

“Yes, you have.”

“And I didn’t get to formally apologise.”

“Go on.”

There’s a redolence of coffee lingering in the air.

“I’m sorry. I want to make it up to you, and I know I don’t deserve it, but—if you would let me, I want to.”

Clarke’s frown grows curious. “And how do you intend to make it up to me?”

“I’ll want you, because I want _you_ , because you’re _you_ , and not because I just need somebody to lay down with. Is that…okay?” Lexa asks unsurely, timorously, shoulders squared like she’s bracing herself for a rejection.

Clarke’s frown evolves into a smile, an _at last_ , glad and alacritous smile. She crosses the distance between them easily, as if it hadn’t been there at all. She kisses Lexa, chastely, then more deeply. Her hand goes to Lexa’s shoulder, over the old bullet wound, and there, it remains.

“Okay,” she whispers.

Clarke reclines Lexa deeper into the couch, hand cupping her jaw with the most forbearing and lightest of touches. She glides along Lexa’s jaw with the back of her hands, up her ears and smoothing away hair with her thumbs.

Lexa still dreams. Nothing is fixed so easily in this world, after all. But she wakes up without having to apologise, greeted with the prospect of just falling into open and willing arms and sink back into sweeter sleep.

“That’s a start.”


End file.
